The Day The Buffalo Escaped

This is a curious little animation the simplicity of which belies it's message.

Initially, you suspect this is going to be a children's tale, shot in simple, stylised animation, about a little girl and her imaginery pet water buffalo. But it's much more serious than that, bringing home the horrors of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.

It's hard to pigeon-hole this film. It looks lovely but the move from innocence to bloodshed feels incongrous. This is probably the point but there is an over-reliance on a piece of round-up text at the close of film, to explain what you've seen, which weakens the overall impact. While the statistics are shocking it is surely the remit of an animator to show us without relying on such back up.